As great as Tom Brady is, and as great as everyone around here realizes Tom Brady is, might Tom Brady be even greater than that?

I say this because we around here are backward baseball folk, living more than 50 years behind the times as far as which game occupies the heart and soul of America at large.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. People are passionate about what they are passionate about. Count me as both a baseball WAR geek who considers Mike Trout the greatest baseball player ever and an October romantic who feels in his heart that Big Papi is a future Hall of Famer.

I am just a tad more passionate about football.

And I believe if Brady ever did in a nutso football town — say in Dallas or Pittsburgh or Green Bay or Chicago — what he has done here in New England, he would already be much bigger there than Ted Williams, Bill Russell and Bobby Orr are here. The statue would already be up.

Look, I understand this is ridiculously subjective. It’s just my gut feeling that says Brady is the best professional athlete ever to play in Boston (even if the games are in Foxboro).

My exchange rate values Super Bowls of the 21st century at three to four times more significant than championships in any other professional sport played in the U.S. in any century. Football at this time in our history is king like no other sport has ever been king, and is spectacularly competitive.

Brady has three Super Bowl rings, and has come oh so close to winning two others, in this colossus of a sport that conspires like no other to tear teams apart through attrition and salary-cap ramifications. Because they have Brady, and coach Bill Belichick, the Patriots are to be reckoned with EVERY YEAR, even this year, in which the fight to 9-3 has perhaps been Brady’s finest hour, which someone looking merely at the 86.3 passer rating he had coming into Sunday (19th in the league) couldn’t possibly understand.

Yes, I know, Bill Russell led the Celtics to 11 NBA championships in 13 years. That remains mind boggling. It is almost too good, calling into question the competition. Anyone who watches the NFL week in and week out knows that it is the definition of competition. Also, the NBA during most of Russell’s years was roughly at a level in the national consciousness to what Major League Soccer is today.

Russell was a phenomenal player who, like all great players, made those around him better. But there were only four other guys on the court he needed to make better. And many of those guys were the same guys year after year.

Brady is the only Patriot still dressing from the team’s first Super Bowl championship team 12 seasons ago. His influence on 44 teammates and the many complex moving parts in a football game is Obi-Wan Kenobi-like. Brady is a cool-headed force. The Patriots respond to his will.

Yes, Ted Williams was the “greatest hitter ever” though famously was never part of a championship team, unless we transcend sports and count the U.S. Marine Corps. Williams also was “Teddy Ballgame” back when baseball was the true national pastime, before Alan Ameche went over from the 1-yard line in the fading light at Yankee Stadium.

If you’re arguing about the greatest offensive force in baseball history, it comes down to Williams or Babe Ruth.

OK, and maybe Barry Bonds.

So how could Brady ever be considered greater than the great Teddy Ballgame? Like, I said, it’s just a feeling. Maybe I’m blinded by the euphoric comeback from 24-0 down eight days ago against the Broncos in the bone-chilling cold of Gillette Stadium. Great quarterbacks often must conquer nature, often when it is fierce. Brady is arguably the greatest inclement QB ever.

Even so, I know what many of you are thinking. Brady better than Bobby Orr? No player ever looked more ridiculously superior to those he played against than Orr. The NHL doubling in size in Orr’s second season, before there was enough of an American and European talent pipeline to pick up the slack, contributed some to Orr’s otherworldliness. But he was still the greatest hockey player ever, even if Wayne Gretzky less sensationally similarly impacted games.

And we do love our hockey around here.

Still, hockey is a distant fourth among the Big Four professional sports in the United States.

I just think football during Brady’s era takes precedence, and that playing quarterback in the NFL is the hardest thing to do in team sports.

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